Adele, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran. They were all once confronted with accusations of plagiarism. The dispute between the power plant and Pelham is still in full swing. What the court decisions mean for creativity?
“Stole it all, but the Great have awesome stolen”, once said of the American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Meant he had the Musikklau, in which a composer uses musical Material of other composers in his own work. Bernstein noted that in the case of the “Large” the resulting new work of a high creative share. Although he referred to the Great classical music; but the fact is, this has happened to genres in all of music. Melodies, harmonies, or characteristic rhythms can be re-used, and issues often without the author’s permission. For decades, employees of the courts; the dispute values are always higher.
Kraftwerk vs. Pelham
Currently, the Band Kraftwerk, and the Rap fight-artists Moses Pelham court. This had taken two seconds from the power station title of “metal on metal” and loop for Sabrina Setlur-produced Track “Only me”.
Defendant Pelham
The case occupied the courts for more than 20 years and is now at the European court of justice. Recently, a reviewer of the ECJ strengthened the authors Position: The copy and the use of Parts of a phonogram in another song was to prohibit interference in the rights of the manufacturer and, without the latter’s permission, it was said. Binding the review for ECJ judges is not, but frequently follow it. In 2019, the judgment is about to fall.
Of a whole music genre affected: During Sampling, the specific Remove and re-use of foreign material, is the whole point in the Copy. The previous judgment sayings in this connection were in the different instances. A note that the courts are perhaps not the best place to draw the boundaries of creativity?
Celebrities in the dock
The Columbia Law School in New York, has documented over 100 cases in which it comes to music plagiarism. The most famous and longest case related to a Beatle: 27 years, was fought over “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison. At the end of $ 1.6 million in royalties to the Band “The Chiffons” were due, because Harrison had one of their Songs copied.
Other sizes of them got it also. A template for the “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash is supposed to be the “Crescent City Blues” by Gordon Jenkins. Cash had to pay 100,000 U.S. dollars to the author.
Lightly armed to Led Zeppelin play “Stairway to Heaven, for” with 500 million dollars in revenue one of the most successful songs of all time. Here, the Band has not been convicted of plagiarism.
Pop star Shakira hit it harder: 2014, a U.S. Federal court ruled that the singer had acted illegally, as in 2010 it made the song “Loca con su Tiguere” in the Dominican singer Ramon Arias Vásquez on the basis of their hit “Loca”.
And also the German Rapper Bushido has been sentenced: He had to pay to the French Gothic Band Dark Sanctuary damages in the amount of more than € 60,000. He had used 16 titles of them pirated, and as its own output, so the court.
The plagiarism cases and accusations in the music industry are hard to overlook: the defendants also Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Adele, Rihanna, Madonna, Beyoncé, or the Bands The Beach Boys, Nirvana and Coldplay.
Guilty of Beatle George Harrison said:
Pandora’s box: stolen Feeling
Usually, these cases of dispute about stolen melodies, and the proof is in the meantime also software, the plagiarism to detect.
In a prominent case, but there is something more abstract: the Groove, the Vibe, or the Feel of a song. So Robin Thicke & Pharrell Williams in 2015, had to pay 7.4 million dollars (approximately 6.9 million euros) to the descendants of Soul legend Marvin Gaye, because her song “Blurred Lines” with the Gaye Song “Got to Give It Up” from the ‘ 70s to be very similar. This should be the precedent, the consequences would be incalculable.
2018 to put Gaye’s heirs sued the singer Ed Sheeran to whole $ 100 million (approximately EUR 86 million). In the case of his Hit “Thinking out Loud” from the year 2014 – with more than two billion, one of the most listened Songs of all time Retrieve on YouTube to Let Sheeran rhythm and melody of the song “let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye from the year 1973. It is not the first Time that the 27-year-old British Megastar with plagiarism is faced allegations.
Creativity is not exhausted
Litigation piling up in the music industry, because today everything is available and verifiable, said the American musicologist Nate Sloan in the Germany radio.
For about 70 years, there is pop music. In comparison to other genres of music it arises after a relatively narrow stylistic criteria. Is the musical Material in the meantime? “I don’t,” Sloan think. “Mathematically, there are still countless ways, such as sounds for melodies and Songs that can be arranged.”
ESC: suitable for mass production and catchy it must be
But: “Pop needs to be catchy, suitable for mass production and easy to understand,” adds the scholar. To achieve this, it is developed mostly in Teams. This does not exclude the Emergence of original ideas, these falls but unique to each of the people increasingly difficult.
A Prime example of the creativity of the factories of our time in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), for the many countries spend each year enormous sums of money. Sometimes composers and producers work together in Songwriting Camps and often take more or less the same approach: The Song has to like right off the bat, and a majority of the eligible music taste match, but also an original Element.
Nettas contribution to sound refreshingly original. He was it really?
Also the ESC had to sit down with music plagiarism issues. “Glorious”, the Song that the Band Cascada representing in 2013, Germany, resemble very Loreens “Euphoria”, last year’s winner from Sweden. “No plagiarism”, however, was the judgment of the reviewers. Also the current Song, “Toy”, with the Israeli Netta has the ESC in 2018, won, should be a plagiarism, was the accusation of the Universal Music Group. Netta is said to have the Hit “Seven Nation Army” by the Band the White Stripes. The price has not been known to Netta, however, but, and the ESC will be held as expected in 2019 in Tel Aviv.
In Jazz, different rules apply as in the case of pop music. The style of the criteria are wider, and the use of foreign material is much less restrictive. No jazz artist is now described without the names of five, six other artists will fall to him.
You have stolen all the said Leonard Bernstein. Only Some made it better.
“On the shoulder of giants…”
The question remains: Where does the Inspiration, and where plagiarism starts? In the future will set exact criteria, so that artists know what is allowed and what is not? And if Yes, then a new wave of creativity? Or be blurred, in further quarrels, the borders, the uncertainty larger and the creativity slowed down?
That everything is better and clearer, seems doubtful. The problem of Plagiarism also applies to other areas of the arts, academic life and science. It is, to say it with the words of the famous English physicist Isaac Newton, in the art and not significantly different to that in science: “If I could look a little further, it’s because I was on the shoulder of giants.”